Tag: Wildfire

Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record — our City Hall newsletter. It’s David Zahniser, with assists from Tony Barboza, Andrew Khouri and Laura J. Nelson, giving you the latest on city and county government.

One of the most emotionally charged issues facing Los Angeles-area political leaders since the deadly wildfires is also one of the most basic: How will the government get rid of all the debris?

When the week began, L.A. city and county elected officials were facing furious demands to haul it away more swiftly. By week’s end, they were hearing criticism that the process was moving too fast — and that the hazardous waste was being shipped to the wrong places.

President Trump first seized on the debris issue during his Jan. 24 visit to L.A. At an awkward roundtable discussion, he told Mayor Karen Bass that homeowners in Pacific Palisades, the part of Los Angeles hardest hit by the fires, were “devastated” to learn they would be “forced to wait 18 months” to get building permits. “I just think you have to allow people to go on their site and start the process tonight,” he told the mayor.

Trump Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt piled on days later, telling reporters in Washington, D.C., that Pacific Palisades residents felt “as though their government has just gone insane.”

“Before President Trump showed up on the scene, Karen Bass was telling private property owners that they would have to wait 18 months to access their private property,” she said.

So where did that 18-month timetable come from? Apparently, the federal government itself.

On Jan. 23, a day before Trump’s arrival, Bass and other local elected officials took part in a post-wildfire Zoom call hosted by the Pacific Palisades Community Council — a packed session attended by hundreds of residents grieving over the loss of their homes. Among the speakers was Col. Eric Swenson of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, who — along with L.A. County Public Works Director Mark Pestrella — explained the government’s strategy for hauling away debris.

“If all things go as planned,” Swenson told about 1,000 people in the Zoom meeting, “we expect to be meaningfully complete with private property debris removal sometime in the next 18 months.”

Swenson and Pestrella said residents whose homes were destroyed would have access to a two-part program funded by the federal government. During the mandatory first phase, workers from the Environmental Protection Agency would remove hazardous waste — paint, asbestos, lithium-ion batteries and so on — from the sites of burned-out homes.

Over the longer second phase, the Army Corps of Engineers would send crews to haul away the remainder of the debris. (Property owners also may choose to pay for their own private cleanup of nonhazardous materials.)

Some wildfire survivors were stunned at the prospect of waiting 18 months, voicing their frustration online and in person. Trump channeled that anger during his Pacific Palisades roundtable, telling Bass in front of the cameras: “They want to start now. They want to start removing things.”

Councilmember Traci Park pointed out to Trump that the 18-month timeline had been announced by the Army Corps. Other local officials, during the roundtable and in the days that followed, warned that residents could face health risks if they personally sift through toxic debris, especially without protective equipment.

“The most important thing is for people to be safe,” Bass said.

Since the Palisades fire broke out on Jan. 7, Bass has sometimes struggled to answer questions about the city’s response. Asked at one point about the criticism from Trump’s press secretary, she told KNX that she had a productive call with the administration that same day.

Trump, in an executive order, has called for the heads of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the EPA and other U.S. agencies to develop a plan to speed up the removal of debris — including contaminated material.

According to one White House official, federal agencies have since tripled the number of hazardous materials teams heading out to the Palisades and Eaton burn areas. They also laid plans for having the EPA and Army Corps work simultaneously on different parts of the same site, as part of the effort to speed things up.

By midweek, L.A. County officials were offering a more accelerated debris removal timeline.

“EPA’s Phase one started at a projected three months, and is now shortened to 30 days,” Supervisor Lindsey Horvath said on Wednesday.

Swenson, standing near Horvath, presented a different schedule as well, saying “better than 80 to 90 percent” of the properties burned in the Eaton and Palisades fires would be cleared by the Army Corps “in the first year or less.”

Swenson acknowledged that he had previously described debris removal as an 18-month process, but said there had been a misunderstanding. The vast majority of people who sign up for debris removal “will be done much faster than a year,” he said.

“But there will always be people, for a variety of reasons, where ownership of the property may be in doubt because the owner may have passed away during or before the fire,” he said. “The county can’t approve [a site cleanup] until they have established legal ownership.”

Supervisor Kathryn Barger, whose district includes Altadena and who is the only Republican on the board, credited Trump with speeding things up, telling reporters that the president “doesn’t mess around.” Horvath thanked Barger for working to secure the faster timeline from the EPA.

But by then, the supervisors were contending with a different political headache.

Residents in Duarte, Azusa and other San Gabriel Valley communities were furious to learn that Lario Park in Irwindale had been designated as a site that would temporarily receive paint, bleach and other hazardous waste from the burned-out properties of the Eaton fire.

That rocky location, which is actually known as the Lario Staging Area, is owned by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and was leased until last month to the L.A. County parks department.

At a packed town hall in Azusa, residents and officials from cities near the site expressed anger and dismay that federal officials had taken action without notifying them. As environmental officials fielded their questions, other residents shouted: “Leave it in Altadena!”

“It feels like David versus Goliath,” Duarte Mayor Cesar Garcia said.

Celeste McCoy, an on-scene coordinator with the EPA, told county officials that the site was chosen because it is already owned by the federal government.

“We are moving as fast as possible,” she said. “We have, by order of the White House within the last 48 hours, to expedite this phase one process.”

Barger agreed that the EPA should have done better outreach to the communities around Lario Park. But she expressed confidence that federal cleanup crews would “make sure that it’s safe.”

“I can tell you, having worked with the EPA, they are probably the strictest agency to work with,” she said.

On Friday, Trump spokesperson Kush Desai suggested that more moves might be on the way. In a statement, he said the president plans to use “every lever of executive and legislative power” to “rebuild ruined homes and communities.”

“President Trump’s actions have streamlined government bureaucracy and deployed additional federal resources to expedite the cleanup and rebuilding process — efforts we only intend to build on to get Americans’ lives back on track as soon as possible,” he said.

State of play

— FLOOR FIGHT: The City Council declined to move ahead with tenant protections proposed in response to the region’s devastating wildfires. After an extremely heated discussion, the council voted 10-3 to send the proposal to its housing and homelessness committee for more deliberations. The proposal included a prohibition on several types of evictions if tenants experienced economic or medical hardship as a result of the fires.

— WALKING TOUR: Bass and Steve Soboroff, the city’s chief recovery officer, took the news media on a freewheeling half-hour walking tour in Pacific Palisades, where they discussed plans to hire a firm to oversee the rebuilding process. “They’re going to represent you and make sure that everybody does exactly what they say they’re going to do,” Soboroff said.

— BATTLIN’ BARGER: Meanwhile, Barger fielded questions from the LAT’s Steve Lopez, telling him that residents have a right to rebuild in high-fire risk areas like Altadena. “I talked to a probation officer whose home had been in the family forever,” she said. “And I’m not going to look her in the eye and say, ‘You can’t build. Sorry. Climate change.’”

— HEATED OVER HOUSING: Speaking of the supes, housing advocates are upset over a proposal to temporarily waive state housing laws in Altadena and other unincorporated areas impacted by wildfires. Barger and Lindsey Horvath, whose districts were in the path of the fires, want Gov. Gavin Newsom to temporarily exempt those areas from laws intended to speed up the creation of affordable housing.

— HEALTH HAZARDS: Toxins may have reached parts of L.A. well outside the immediate fire zones.

— FIRE STARTER: Inside the search for the cause of the Palisades fire.

— PUSHED OUT: City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto has fired Michelle McGinnis, the onetime head of the office’s criminal branch, a lawyer for McGinnis told The Times. Matthew McNicholas, who represents McGinnis, said his client will challenge her termination. Last year, McGinnis sued Feldstein Soto, saying she faced retaliation after identifying a number of misdeeds by her boss. Feldstein Soto, who previously denied wrongdoing, declined comment on McGinnis’ employment status.

— PARK PROCEEDS: City Councilmember Traci Park, who represents Pacific Palisades and other coastal areas, is running for reelection in June 2026. On Friday, she reported that her campaign took in about $306,000 in donations during the fundraising period that ended Dec. 31. Meanwhile, businessman Tim Gaspar, who is running to replace Councilmember Bob Blumenfield in the west San Fernando Valley, reported that he collected more than $106,000 — which includes a $25,000 personal loan from himself.

— EMERGENCY FUND: The council set aside $50 million for wildfire emergency response and recovery on Friday, borrowing the money from the Department of Building and Safety. The council approved the transfer unanimously, noting that the loan would be repaid with state and federal emergency relief funds.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature initiative to combat homelessness went to Historic Filipinotown this week, focusing on a stretch of Beverly Boulevard represented by Councilmember Hugo Soto–Martínez.
• On the docket for next week: The Los Angeles Board of Fire Commissioners, a five-member panel made up of mayoral appointees, holds its first meeting since the outbreak of the fires in Pacific Palisades and elsewhere.